BTC-e Comes Back From The Dead – Officially Rebranded As Wex.nz

September 15th, 2017 saw the reopening of one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges – BTC-e – after they rebranded it as Wex.nz.

The update was announced on the official Twitter account:

Messages from users thanking BTC-e for coming back online flooded their Twitter as well as the live chat section on the new site.

BTC-e, one of the oldest and largest cryptocurrency exchanges had gone offline on July 27 without any notice and users believed it to be a maintenance issue.

However, the site remained offline as stories developed regarding the arrest of Alexander Vinnik in Greece – who was claimed to be the owner of BTC-e. He was arrested by the FBI on multiple charges, including money laundering.

Shortly afterwards BTC-e announced that the site would remain offline for 10 days, but it was widely believed that it was not going to reopen and users had lost their cryptocurrencies.

BTC-e gets fined for $110 million

The U.S Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) then announced that BTC-e was involved in facilitating illegal activity online and would be subjected to a fine of $110 million.

According to their press release:

“BTC-e ... was heavily reliant on criminals, including by not requiring users to validate their identity, obscuring and anonymizing transactions and source of funds, and by lacking any anti-money laundering processes. The indictment alleges BTC-e was operated to facilitate transactions for cybercriminals worldwide and received the criminal proceeds of numerous computer intrusions and hacking incidents, ransomware scams, identity theft schemes, corrupt public officials, and narcotics distribution rings. Instead of acting to prevent money laundering, BTC-e and its operators embraced the pervasive criminal activity conducted at the exchange. Users openly and explicitly discussed criminal activity on BTC-e’s user chat.”

Updates kept rolling in

Updates from BTC-e’s official Twitter and Bitcointalk forum accounts kept coming in though, much to the relief of users, most of whom were skeptical about getting their coin balances back.

BTC-e announced that they were looking into transferring exchange ownership and reopening after meeting full compliance regulations.

An offer is made

Starting September 1, daily updates were promised by the BTC-e team and they announced that 45% of their funds were seized. They came up with a payment plan and gave users two options:

• Option 1: Users could withdraw 55% of their funds from the refund site now and forego the 45% debt BTC-e owes them.
• Option 2: Users wait till an officially rebranded site is launched and get 45% of the missing funds in debt tokens issued by BTC-e with a promise to buyback later.

From feedback online it appeared that most users decided to stay and wait for the rebranded launch.

Official rebranded site launched

15th September saw the official rebranded site launching as Wex.nz and we can confirm that users received up to 61% of their coins along with debt tokens issued by BTC-e that can be traded on their token market or held until the exchange can buy them back at face value.

The new exchange, Wex, is now owned by World Exchange Services, and the exchange confirmed that they are now fully compliant with Anti-Money Laundering and Know Your Customer laws as per the requirements of Singapore law.

“Our platform will operate according to AML/KYC laws and world legislation in this field. World Exchange Services payment service is regarded as a stored value facility under Singapore law.”

We can also confirm that coin withdrawals on the new site are functional and users can now withdraw their available coin balances and trade tokens.